This document summarizes a research paper that examined how Australian construction companies approach employee safety, well-being, and training as resources to improve sustainability performance. The research analyzed annual reports and websites of the top 20 construction companies. It found that most companies prioritize employee safety and larger companies also emphasize well-being. Around half provided training though mandatory health and safety training was common. Public and private companies showed no significant differences in practices. Safety and well-being, and training and well-being, were positively correlated. The research contributes to understanding how employee skills can boost sustainability performance.

1. EMPLOYEES’ AS A RESOURCE TO IMPROVE CORPORATE
SUSTAINABILITY PERFORMANCE: A REVIEW OF AUSTRALIAN
CONSTRUCTION COMPANIES.
Fatima Afzal 1 and Benson Lim 2
Faculty of Built Environment. University of New South Wales. Sydney, Australia.
ABSTRACT
Construction is a labour intensive industry; therefore skills and attitudes of
employees’ are crucial in improving company’s sustainability performance.
The purpose of this research is to review the attitudes of Australian
construction companies towards safety; wellbeing; and development of their
employees. The specific objectives are to: (i) review relevant organisational
data to identify the initiatives adopted by construction companies to improve
employee’s safety and well-being; (ii) to determine if companies provide
training to employees to improve sustainability performance; and (iii) to
determine if there exists any difference of practice between public owned and
private companies. This research adopted survey research design which
involved a systematic review of the contents of annual reports and websites of
the major construction organisations. Empirical evidence showed that
organisations with high level of commitments to attract, reward and train good
people can not only benefit improved performance but also gained competitive
edge over other organisations. The research findings inform construction
organisations to invest strategically on their employees in an attempt to gain
competitive advantage.
Key words: sustainability, employee safety,
INTRODUCTION
Sustainability has become a fundamental challenge for construction companies in the
past decade. Although some companies have adopted some form of programme to
improve sustainability performance. However, according to Lucas (2009) companies
must use a holistic approach in order to be successful. Research suggests that
businesses should perceive different forms of sustainability strategies as resources and
capabilities that can be sources of competitive advantage (Hart, 1995).The success of
sustainability performance is not only dependent on how each resource is managed but
the overall mechanism that enables organisations to utilise them towards its advantage
(Mahoney and Pandian, 1992). Construction is a labour intensive industry therefore
the skills and training of their employees could be a resource; that could not only
improve sustainability performance but could also provide competitive edge to the
organisation.

2. This paper examines Australian construction companies’ attitudes towards safety;
wellbeing; and development of their employees. Companies’ attitudes are examined
through analyses of their annual reports and information given on websites. Hopwood
(1996) recommended that annual reports have become a highly sophisticated product
which reflects the practices and principles about how a company conduct business.
The specific objectives are to: (i) review relevant organisational data to identify the
initiatives adopted by construction organisations to improve employees’ safety and
well-being; (ii) to determine if organisations provide training to employees to improve
sustainability performance; and (iii) to determine if there exist any disconnects
between public owned and private companies.. This research adopted a survey
approach in which a content analysis was done for the top 20 commercial contractors
listed by the Housing Industry Association (HIA).
CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY PERFORMANCE
International institute for sustainable development interpreted corporate sustainability
as ‘‘adopting business strategies and activities that meet the needs of the enterprise
and its stakeholders while protecting, sustaining, and enhancing the human and natural
resources that will be needed in the future’’ (IISD, 1992). Dyllick and Hockerts,
(2002) explained that organisational sustainability outspreads the principles of
sustainable development to the level of organisations. From this perspective, a
company is considered sustainable if a certain level of performance is attained in all
three dimensions of sustainability (i.e. social, economic and environmental).
THE RESOURCE BASE VIEW (RBV)
The resource-based view (RBV) of the firm describes relationships between resources
owned by a firm and its ability to compete with its rivals. The RBV argues that a
firm’s resources contribute to its growth and performance (Barney, 1991). These
resources include tangible and intangible assets, such as management skills,
organisational processes and routines, and information and knowledge it controls
(Barney et al., 2001).
Moreover, According to Barney (1991) the resources have to be heterogeneous in
nature and cannot be transferred from one firm to another without cost to achieve
sustainable competitive advantage and bring in above-average returns. The theory also
asserts that sustainable competitive advantage could be achieved by firms that have
‘unique resources’ or capabilities which are rare, valuable, inimitable and non-
substitutable (Barney, 1991).
Resource based view and sustainability
Hart (1995) applied RBV framework to environmental social responsibility and
asserted that environmental and social responsibility could constitute a resource or
capability that leads organisations to a sustained competitive advantage. In similar
studies Deniz-Deniz and Saa-Pérez (2003) empirically evaluated how social

3. responsiveness policies toward employees increased profitability among the Spanish
banking sector. Bowen (2007) compared the diverging uses of RBV and behavioural
theories of the firm in corporate social strategy studies.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
In this research a survey research design is adopted involving a systematic review of
the contents of annual reports and websites of the top twenty construction
organisations as listed by Housing Industry Association. According to Weber (1985)
content analysis as a research method is a systematic and objective mean of analysing
any written, verbal or visual communication messages. Content analysis is widely
used in sustainability related research (e.g.: Zeghal and Ahmed 1990; Myers 2005;
Afzal and Lim 2012) to survey published accounts. It should be noted that the value of
content analysis lies in the assumption that the extent of disclosure can be taken as
some indication of the importance of an issue to the reporting organisation
Krippendorf (1980).
The large organisations represent the common trends of the overall Australian
Construction Industry (HIA, 2014). Annual report from Housing Industry Association
(HIA) indicates that the top 100 commercial construction organisations won seventy
percent of all work done in a year.
Data collection
To study the initiatives adopted by construction companies the annual report for the
year 2013 were collected and analysed. Furthermore company’s websites were also
researched for any information related to employee wellbeing, training and
development. The analysis of disclosure was undertaken to identify whether the
organisations included the practices related to development; wellbeing; and safety of
employees in the annual reports. It should be noted that the this research only focused
on 2013 annual reports and data form the website of these companies were collected
between September and October 2014. Any data available beyond this time frame
were not considered in this study. . Further analysis was undertaken to search and
identify the following key phrases or keywords from the company website.
I. “Safety” was selected as a keyword to indicate occurrence of the terms safety,
work place injuries.
II. Well-being was selected as a keyword to indicated occurrence of the terms
employees benefits, paid leaves, health care support.
III. ‘Training’ was selected as an indicator of training and development referring
the initiatives adopted by companies to offer several training programs to

4. employees such as occupational health and safety, risk management, and
sustainability education.
Sample profile
Table 1 specifies the observed demographics of the sample. The size (based on total
contract won in year 2013-2014) ranged between $474 million to $4936 million. This
shows that there is a huge difference in the capacity (10 times) even in the small
sample of top 20 organisations. The size (based on number of employees) ranged
from as small as 90 to 20000. It is interesting to note that number of employees is not
related the contracts won. The sample comprises of six (30 percent) public listed
organisations and fourteen (70 percent) private owned organisations.
Rank Company No of employees
Total contracts won
(million)
1 Lend Lease Pty Ltd 16536 $4,936
2 Thiess Pty Ltd 16000 $2,876
3 Brookfield Multiplex 1135 $2,505
4 BGC (Australia) Pty Ltd 3300 $1,608
5 Leighton Contractors Pty Ltd 14000 $1,552
6 Watpac Australia Pty Ltd 1350 $1,440
7 John Holland Pty Ltd 5794 $1,382
8 Downer EDI works Pty Ltd 20000 $1,155
9 Parkview Group (Australia) Pty Ltd 160 $980
10 Hansen Yuncken Pty Ltd 800 $912
11 Hutchinson Builders Pty Ltd 1400 $727
12 CBI 16000 $717
13 Meriton Apartments Pty Ltd N/A $715
14 Built Pty Ltd 500 $702
15 Mirvac Group 1200 $649
16 Icon Construction Australia 200 $612
17 Westfield Design & Construction Pty Ltd 4000 $586
18 Richard Crookes Constructions 300 $559
19 ADCO Constructions Pty Ltd 400 $542
20 Hamilton Marino Builders 90 $474
Table 1: Selected sample profile
RESULTS AND DISSCUSSION
Descriptive statistics
Table 2 indicate the overall trend of employee related practices of top Australian
construction organisations. The results of descriptive analysis show that 80 percent of
the sample has a high relevance for safety of their employees. Companies are
continuously striving to minimize work related injuries and deaths. It should be noted

5. that some of these companies have reported some innovative methods to reduce safety
risk in mining sites (e.g. Downer mining has introduced an anti-collision device that
alerts driver about relative position of other vehicles). This trend is a reflection of
strict regulations in Australia about work place safety. Companies receive heavy fines
for not complying with the law (one company has reported to get a fine of $188,643
when a worker sustained multiple extensive injuries). Most companies (40 percent)
reported to use AS 4801 as safety management system. However the top ranked
companies used GMRs. Employee well-being is reported as a key practice (55
percent) by companies with large number of employees. However only 45 percent of
the sample companies showed practices related to employee training and development.
It is worth noting that this does not include compulsory occupational health and safety
training.
Safety Well-being Training
Percentage of companies 80% 55% 45%
Table 2: Percentage of companies indicated employee related commitments
Another result of descriptive analysis is summarised in figure 1. Most companies give
mandatory occupational health and safety training to their employees. Practices related
to employee’s wellbeing include: flexible working hours (60 percent) medical
assistance (25 percent); and paid parental leave (20 percent). Large companies offer
apprentice programmes in which fresh graduates gain industry experience. These
companies also offer paid study leaves to retain experienced staff.
Figure 1: implementation of different employee related initiative in the sample companies
Statistical analysis
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Employee training programmes
Apprentice programmes
Occupational health and safety training
Paid prental leave
Flexible work time models
Fringe benefits to employees
Study leave
Medical assitance

6. Table 3 summarizes the statistical analyses of differences in the practices of public
listed and privately owned construction companies. This table was formulated to test
weather company type could influence the focus of employee related commitments.
The null hypothesis was that there is no difference of practices between public listed
and privately owned companies. However no statistical significant difference (p
>0.05) was detected. Therefore the null hypothesis is retained.
Comparison sample size key word χ2 p
Public listed Private
Public listed vs.
Privately owned
companies
6 14 Safety 2.87 0.091
well-being 3.67 0.055
Training 4.615 0.099
Table 3: Chi- square analyses of employee related practices of public listed and private companies
Table 4 summarizes the correlation between different key words. Safety and wellbeing
are significantly correlated (0.864) at 0.01 levels. This indicates that the well-being of
employees would be better of the company that show higher commitment to safety.
Similarly training and well-being are significantly correlated (0.623) at 0.01 levels.
This means that the well-being of employees would be higher of the company that
spend more money on training and educating their employees.
saf ety wellbeing training
Spearman's rho safety Correlation Coefficient 1.000 .864** .482*
Sig. (2-tailed) . .000 .036
N 19 19 19
wellbeing Correlation Coefficient .864** 1.000 .623**
Sig. (2-tailed) .000 . .004
N 19 19 19
training Correlation Coefficient .482* .623** 1.000
Sig. (2-tailed) .036 .004 .
N 19 19 19
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
Table 4: correlation of different key words

7. The trend of publishing the annual report is much higher (100 percent) in public listed
companies in comparison to only 35 percent of the privately owned companies. The
higher trend of public companies is due to compulsory enforcement by ASX to publish
company data.
CONCLUSION
Survey research was adopted in this research to perform content analyses of publically
available data of top Australian construction companies in context of their
commitments towards employee safety, well-being and training. The results indicate
that most organisations put employees’ safety at a priority level. Companies are
educating employees to manage their sustainability performance in a better way.
This study contributed to the body of knowledge by providing the theoretical
relationship between employees’ skills and sustainability performance. In the later
section this study provided the practices of Australian construction companies.
However it should be noted that there are some limitations of this research. The survey
data is based on the publically available annual reports and company’s websites. The
other limitation relates to the small sample size, consequently the results may not be
definitive but only an indication of common trends. Therefore, further and detailed
investigations should be conducted for more generalised findings
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